A given network may provide a number of services for users through various security and services processing accelerator modules. These service modules can perform various functions, through a variety of protocols. Services provided by the service modules may include Firewall, server load balancing (SLB), intrusion protection services, as well as other services.
In environments that have multiple service modules and multiple I/O modules, it may be advantageous to route all traffic received on all I/O module within a network session related to a particular service to a single service module. In addition, traffic in the receive direction corresponding to that session received on any I/O module must be routed to the same module. In order to accomplish this routing, a complete flow routing table may be required at every I/O module. This complete flow routing table requires considerable computer resources and may comprise millions of entries at every I/O module. The use of such a flow table may also introduce other problems into the network, such as synchronization of tables at all I/O modules and service modules, and delay created by the system when accessing the flow routing table. In order to circumvent such stringent requirements, systems and methods that can be used to efficiently route traffic to a number of service modules without the need of a full flow routing table are needed.